“On this long, focused, slow-moving album, Ms. Martin keeps getting at the feeling that very little in life makes sense. ”Even if you choose to go on your separate way/ I’m hoping you’ll be back/ here the same but different” is one way of putting it (in ”Here the Same but Different”); other phrases scattered through the record, like ”you’re not what you say you are” and ”the truth doesn’t matter” and ”I don’t mind that I’m not afraid,” are further iterations of essentially the same principle. These songs are ruled by cryptic storytelling, so that you never get the full outline of the relationships she’s writing about. In the end it’s a record about living through paradox, choosing to appreciate mixed emotions rather than building one-sided certainties of oblivion or hopelessness around them.”Ben Ratliff, The New York Times